This document is to serve as a comprehensive HOWTO and FAQ
collection regarding the Sun JavaStation NC and enabling the GNU/Linux
OS on it.

The intended audience of this document is anyone who has an interest
in enabling Linux on the Sun
JavaStations. The document structure is laid out to
serve as either a top-to-bottom read for a newcomer, or as quick
reference on a single topic for advanced users. Pointers
to sample files submitted by users are included for
extremely hurried readers.

The HOWTO author wishes to give a second thank-you to Pete
and Eric for their work:

Pete got me going with Linux on the
JavaStation in December 1998, has
been the main kernel programmer adding in support for the
JavaStation line, and despite his busy
work schedule was nice enough to find time to answer all my email
queries for help over the last 15 months.

Eric worked on bringing X support to the
JavaStation when it had none.
He had been working on a dedicated server for the
JavaStation in early 1999, and kept me informed of
his progress. In mid-1999, he switched tactics and sent a working
framebuffer example to test out. He also wrote the first comprehensive
mini-HOWTO for the JavaStations,
answered my email questions, and got me interested in the embedded
solution which I employ here at Marquette.

Many major changes: restructured for better layout,
new chapters added, updated files and file pointers,
new master distribution location, source broken into
parts, new sample files, md5sums on all sample files,
overall update and proofread of materials. Thank-you
very much to Simon Kuhn for donating an old Sun4 to
enable more sample files be made. Thank-you also to
Nate Carlson for donating sample kernels (unfortunately
that info was lost during a disk crash...Nate, please
contact me.). If anyone contributed items between
May 31 and Oct 31 and it does not show up in this
revision, please resubmit it.

Revision 1.25

30 Oct 2001

This is called the "@#!$?" release. It is
called such because there were some small-mid
size changes to the document which were lost
in a disk failure, prior to me re-uploading to
the LDP site. To give you an idea of how bad
the situation was, the last version I had on
backup was in Docbook SGML, while I had switched
to Docbook XML many months prior. Simply put,
any contributed changes or email contacts I had
with contributors were lost, and are hopefully on
their way back in with this release. If you
contributed something, and it disappeared, please
contact me immediately, and it'll get back in. --RSD

Revision 1.22

31 May 2001

Changed file links, some sample file formats,
and clarified info relating to the sample files,
following requests on the sparclinux mailing list.

Revision 1.20

08 May 2001

Information Refresh up to the current date,
and change to GNU Free Documentation License 1.1

Copyright (c) 1999-2001 Robert S. Dubinski.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with the Invariant Sections being: "Why JavaStations are No Longer
Produced", with one Front-Cover Text: "Linux on JavaStation HOWTO",
and with one Back-Cover Text: "This document was written
by Robert S. Dubinski in the hope that more people can put
their JavaStation hardware to good use. Thank-you to the
Linux kernel hackers who made this happen, and thank-you to
Sun for a rock-solid piece of hardware." A copy of the
license is included in the section entitled
"GNU Free Documentation License".

The document author makes no warranties that all
the information presented here is completely accurate, and cannot be
held liable to any loss you experience as a result of the information
you use from here.

Best efforts have been made to ensure everything included is accurate as
of the publication date listed at the beginning of this document, but
there is always a possibility something may be wrong. In this case,
doublecheck with alternative sources first before considering implementing
anything at a production-level. If you find something wrong, drop the author
a line at <rsd@dubinski-family.org> or send a patch to the
document source, and corrections will be made immediately.

This project used to be available at the URL
'http://javastation-howto.homeip.net'. In Spring 2001, homeip.net
discontinued their free service and moved to a fee based scheme.
Given the hundreds of mirrors of LDP documents, I do not find
the fees justifiable. I have changed all references in this document back to
my home server. Between my server's address,
http://dubinski-family.org/~jshowto,
the LDP website, and its hundreds of mirrors, you should be able to always
find the JavaStation-HOWTO. If this is not the case, email me immediately
at either <rsd@dubinski-family.org> or
<dubinski@mscs.mu.edu>.

Any problems or concerns about the HOWTO should be reported via email
to the author, Robert Dubinski, at <rsd@dubinski-family.org>.
Do NOT send document bug reports to the
SparcLinux mailing list, the debian-sparc mailing list, or the Linux
Documentation Project. The folks on there really do not care about my
typos or server misconfigurations, so please don't trouble them.